Working with the Creative Director Claire Choisne , in just over a decade Boucheron CEO Hélène Poulit-Duquesne has shaped what was once a dormant heritage house into Place Vendôme’s most avant-garde Maison. As one half of a female partnership driving a high jewelry powerhouse, she shares what makes Boucheron so different.

Admired for its heritage, but rarely considered the industry's creative pace-setter, when she joined as CEO in 2015, Boucheron was frequently characterized as the "sleeping beauty" of French high jewellery. But eschewing reinvention, Poulit-Duquesne believed the answers to “revealing a magical brand” already existed within the house's history.

"The fundamentals didn't need challenging," she explains, from her rue de la Paix office, shortly after the Carte Blanche high jewelry presentation in Paris earlier this summer. “I went deep into the archives to understand the brand and what makes it different from a Cartier, for example, that was also created in the late 1800s.” What she found, was the design language that had separated founder Frédéric Boucheron from his contemporaries. Creative freedom, a bold interpretation of nature in its wildest incarnation, and technical innovation became the threads connecting the Maison's 19th-century beginnings with a new, 21st-century identity.

Poulit-Duquesne spent much of her career in marketing, for LVMH, Richemont and now Kering. She understands why the right messaging is vital, and stripped the brand back, killing some of the myths that had grown up around the house (including that Frédéric Boucheron had created a cocktail for the Ritz Hotel, opposite the flagship) and drawing on the “reality of the Maison”, which was a calmer, more open approach to what she had been used to.

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She found Boucheron's entrepreneurial culture liberating. Instead of “operating like an ocean liner,” the smaller Maison behaved more like a speedboat; nimble, and swift. Influence did not require intensity, and she describes feeling “centred” when she sat behind her desk on her first day in the job, a feeling that has never left her.

Knowing when to take risks

“I’m a frustrated creative,” she laughs. “My job is to protect Claire’s creativity without taking undue risks. I’ve been fully conscious of some of the gambles we have taken, however. You have to be brave.” She remembers the 2023 More is More collection, a post-Covid technicolor ode to joy that married technical expertise with material innovation and saw rollerskaters handing out lollipops on Place Vendôme. “The whole concept was joy, we wanted to re-live the 1980s, get people up and dancing and looking forwards. It’s our craziest collection so far.”

The collections presented to the press make up only 30% of the house’s overall high jewelry sales, the other 70% are house signature pieces destined for a classic clientele. Yet the twice-yearly presentations fulfil an important role in foregrounding creativity and craftsmanship.

July’s Human Being collection, which sought to demonstrate that “we are all the same, but different”, through five identical necklace silhouettes produced differently, harnessed the skills of glyptic artists and miniature painters, who Poulit-Duquesne and Choisne made sure to mention by name during the press presentations.

Yet there is no contradiction between discipline and experimentation; the ateliers can only push technical boundaries because the business remains healthy enough to support creative risk. “Creativity is sacred, it must be protected,” she explains. “When I speak to jewelers in the ateliers, they tell me that the materials react to the human touch in a way that cannot be replicated by a machine. I believe there’s an energetic link between craftsmanship and material.” Perhaps that intuition is the essence of luxury itself.

The Maison has an AI roadmap, but on technology-enabled creativity, she draws a clear line: “Artificial intelligence has enormous potential across legal, finance, commercial planning and other back-office functions. Even creative teams can benefit from AI for mood boards or repetitive tasks. But creation itself remains untouchable.” Equally clear, are principles around sourcing; Boucheron no longer uses Afghan lapis lazuli or rubies from Myanmar, an uncompromising position that can also fuel material creativity.

Intuitive leadership for a new gen market

As one of the relatively few women leading a Place Vendôme jewelry house, she believes female leadership brings a more physical relationship with jewellery itself that helps maintain a client-centric positioning. While some of her male counterparts appreciate high jewellery as works of art, women are more likely to experience them physically; consider how they feel to wear, how they move, and the emotions they create. At Boucheron, you’re unlikely to find earrings that weigh more than 20g “to avoid migraines.”

Twenty years ago, clients were buying high jewelry more its investment value. Today, Poulit-Duquesne sees a younger, particularly Asian and US, clientele buying extraordinary pieces with their own money simply because they want to wear them. A stand-out piece in the Or Bleu collection (2024), which explored water in all its forms, was a floor-skimming transformable diamond sautoir necklace. Poulit-Duquesne recently found herself at an event, sitting next to the twenty-something female entrepreneur who had eventually bought it.

Jewelry is currently outperforming in a stagnant luxury market, and Boucheron is leading the Kering stable. But long-term ambitions extend beyond revenue or market share: “I’d like future generations to think that Claire and I moved jewelry forwards,” she says. It’s a realistic proposition given that pieces from her tenure are now held in major museums, like the Victoria & Albert Museum in London; Christie’s New York is also preparing to open an immersive retrospective in October, designed as a ‘living monograph’. “For us, it goes beyond jewelry. Tradition is evolving. I’d like people to think that we awakened a sleeping beauty, and got things moving.“

As Frédéric Boucheron himself said, “we don’t impose, we propose”. In opening up the creative possibilities of materials and technique, Choisne and Poulit-Duquesne have widened the definition of luxury jewelry, and put the emotion back into luxury. And that’s a proposition that Boucheron collectors can’t get enough of.